Staff Back End Engineer (Data Platform)

About Forma.ai: Forma.ai is a Series B startup that's revolutionizing how sales

Compensation

is designed, managed and optimized. We handle billions in annual managed commissions for market leaders like Edmentum, Stryker, and Autodesk. Our growth has been fuelled by our passion for fundamentally changing and shaping how companies use sales intelligence to drive business strategy.

We’re welcoming equally driven individuals who are excited about creating something big!

About The Team

Engineers on this team construct our rules-based calculating engine for processing sales commissions. This might sound simple if you have never been exposed to sales comp plans, it is not! We are low on meetings, high on accountability.

Most of the team are in EST time zone but we have a few located in PST and Central as well. We are far from maintenance / progressive evolution in many areas, there is a lot of room to make a big impact in the overall design. What you’ll be doing Reporting to the Manager of Data Platform, you will play a critical role in the evolution of our Spark based data platform.

You'll lead development efforts for our complex, data-rich platform features while being an example to the team of code quality and thoughtful software design. You will be working on the most challenging code at Forma. As a Staff Engineer, you are expected to operate with a high degree of ownership and trust.

This includes proactively identifying architectural risks, surfacing edge cases or constraints others may not see, and advocating for improvements that strengthen the long-term integrity of the system. We value engineers who bring forward thoughtful perspectives - even when they challenge assumptions - and who help the team see around corners. You will: Design and evolve backend services that power product workflows.

Architect data models representing hierarchical graph structures, relationships, and large-scale enterprise datasets. Build deterministic, reliable systems that allow customers to reason clearly about their data. Drive architectural decisions that balance extensibility, performance, and operational simplicity.

Improve observability, testing strategy, and production reliability across backend services.

Requirements

into clean, scalable designs. Mentor engineers across levels and help raise the bar for backend engineering standards.

What We'Re Looking For

: Significant experience designing and building complex backend systems in production environments. Demonstrated ability to surface unarticulated risks, propose alternative approaches, and advocate for architectural improvements with sound technical reasoning. ).

Strong foundation in relational schema design, data modelling, and SQL. Background working with Spark, or other ETL tools / frameworks Experience working with hierarchical, graph-like, or relationship-heavy data structures. Familiarity with graph databases or graph-based modelling concepts is a strong plus.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills. A track record of improving scalability, reliability, and observability in distributed or data-intensive systems. A desire to influence architecture and product direction - not just implement tickets.

Thrive in a collaborative, detail-oriented environment across Engineering, Product, and Analytics.

Nice To Have

: Experience building SaaS products serving mid-market or enterprise customers. Experience building rule-driven systems, validation workflows, or approval/governance platforms. Familiarity with AWS-based infrastructure and Kubernetes.

Compensation (ICM)

, or related domains.